“I don’t know. Lost count.”
“In half an hour?” Marc cursed in Spanish, and I flinched. “What are you, brain-dead?”
“I’m sorry.” I swallowed thickly and took the protein bar Jace handed me. “I didn’t mean to go so far. I just…I needed to heal, and I needed it to hurt. That’s the only way I could make sense out of any of this.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Marc demanded, forgetting to whisper that time.
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t make him understand what I could hardly understand myself.
Jace sighed. “She was punishing herself.”
“No, I…” I shook my head. That wasn’t it. That sounded crazy. Yet he was right, though I would never have put it in those words. “It just… It seemed like a failure on so massive a scale should involve more pain. Like I shouldn’t have been able to just walk away from a loss that cost everything for so many people. Like if I wasn’t hurting, I wasn’t paying for what I cost us.”
“You didn’t walk away from it,” Marc pointed out, ever helpful with the literal interpretation. “Jace carried you. And damn, Faythe, Dean nearly killed you. How is that not enough pain?”
“It just…wasn’t.”
“You’re not making any sense. You did the best you could, and what happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was.” I bit into the snack bar and avoided his eyes. “My best wasn’t good enough, and that’s not an option for an Alpha.”
Marc stared at me for nearly a minute, and I could almost hear the gears whirring in his head. Grinding. But he didn’t really get it, and he hated that. Finally he stood and stomped toward the door. “Make sure she eats the whole box,” he growled. Then the door closed behind him, and I was alone with Jace.
I should have called out to Marc. I should have called him back and figured out a way to explain myself to him. But I was too tired to think, and beyond frustrated.
“He doesn’t get it,” I whispered, wadding the first empty wrapper into a cellophane ball. “Why can’t he get it?”
Jace laid back on the bed next to me, one arm propping up the pillow beneath his head. “Because he’s never failed to measure up. Failure has never ripped a hole in his gut so deep and wide that physical pain is a mercy and a punishment all at the same time.”
“But you have?”
Jace sat up and met my eyes with a gaze so intense my next breath caught in my throat and refused to budge. “I left Ethan in the woods, and he died. We were partners, and I left him, Faythe.” He glanced down at his hands, and I started to argue. He’d only left because Ethan told him to get Kaci to safety. He hadn’t abandoned his partner. But before I could put my argument into words, he looked up again, and something deep in my stomach clenched. “And every time Cal hurts you, and I can’t kill him, I feel the same way. Like I’m not worth the air I breathe if I can’t protect you.”
Twenty-seven
“Wow. It feels insane to be coming back here so soon.” I pulled my duffel higher on my shoulders and glanced around the Roswell airport and the small crowd of morning commuters.
Marc veered toward a row of waiting-room chairs within sight of the car rental place, where Jace was at the front of a short line. Marc sank into the first chair, dropping his bag at his feet. “Considering what happened last time, and everything that’s happened since then, I’d say ‘insane’ is putting it mildly.”
I collapsed onto the seat beside him and stared at my bag in my lap. I had no idea what to say. Things had gotten quiet between us since he’d walked out after my frenetic Shifting extravaganza, and every time I looked at him, it felt like someone was sinking claws through my chest. It felt even worse when he looked at me, and yet worse still when he didn’t.
But I was thankful for my mostly healed body, even after what it had cost me, physically—I’d been practically comatose for nearly another twelve hours after I’d fallen asleep.
“You okay?” he asked, and in my peripheral vision, I could see him watching me.
“Are you?” I wanted to take his hand. I stared at it, lying all alone on the chair arm between us. But I was afraid that would make me look needy. Weak.
“Right now? Yeah.” He twisted in his chair to look at me with unbearable, heartbreaking longing in his eyes. “Because it’s just the two of us.” He glanced around at the harried morning commuters and shrugged. “Relatively speaking. But in a few minutes, it’ll be me, you, and him…” He nodded to the rental counter, where Jace was now talking to a clerk with really poofy hair. “And there’s only so much of that I can take.”
“Marc…”
“Just let me finish,” he said, and I nodded. I didn’t know how to complete my aborted thought, anyway, and I welcomed words from him, when he spoke so often with his fists lately. “I can see how connected you are to each other, and I know that it’s not just physical, which means it’s not just going to blow over. But sharing you with him is like being asked to cut out my own heart and hand half of it over to someone else. It fucking hurts, Faythe. Like I’m dying.”
“So…I’m killing you.” It wasn’t a question; I already recognized it as the truth. Marc wasn’t himself because he couldn’t have all of me, and that was killing both of us.
“And every cat instinct I have is telling me to kill Jace, but I can’t. My human half knows that if I try to rush you into a decision, or do anything to dissuade you from picking him, it’ll backfire on me.”
I blinked, confused. “Why would it backfire?”
He frowned, as if he knew me better than I knew myself. “If I make Jace into the underdog, you’ll fight for him out of instinct. You always fight for the oppressed. That’s just who you are, and that’s one of the reasons I love you. Even if that isn’t working out in my favor this time.”
My next breath felt almost too thick to drag in. “He’s not the underdog, Marc.” I exhaled heavily and fought the urge to drop my gaze. “There is no underdog.”
“That’s the whole problem. You and I have a real history, Faythe. By rights, I should be the front-runner, and he should be the underdog.”
“I know.” But I couldn’t make myself not love Jace any more than he could make himself not love me. And that’s when the reality of the situation truly sank in. I was going to have to walk away from one man who truly loved me in favor of another. And choosing one didn’t mean I’d quit caring about the other.
But did they both understand that? Hell, did either of them?
Yes. Jace understood. He knew that loving Marc didn’t make me love him any less. But Marc couldn’t compromise. It just wasn’t in his skill set.
“And the worst part of this?” He hesitated, rolling his eyes at his own statement. “Well, it’s not the worst part, but it’s bad enough. The thing is, as much as it kills me to see you with him, when I’m not there, he’s the best qualified to protect you. So even if I thought either of you would listen, I couldn’t ask you to stay away from each other right now. I’m not going to stand in the way of your safety, even if it means losing you to him.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I blinked them away.
“Just…” When I didn’t look up, he stopped and tilted my chin until my gaze met his. His eyes were swimming with pain. “Faythe, just tell me you two are being careful. Don’t give him what you won’t give me.”
At first, I didn’t understand. Then I did, and I knew what it cost him to ask me that.
“Marc, I’m not… We’re not…” I took a deep breath and started over. “It was just that once. And yeah. We were careful,” I whispered, the ache in my heart threatening to swallow me whole. He let go of my chin, and I stared down at my hands. “More careful than you and I are.” Because sometimes Marc and I just…got distracted and forgot. I reached for his hand, but he pulled away from me, and my chest hurt so bad I could hardly breathe.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Jace asked, and I looked up to see him walking toward us with a set of keys in one hand and a f
older full of paperwork in the other.
“Nothing.”
Everything.
I swiped one sleeve across my eyes and stood, throwing my bag over one shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Jace frowned, but knew better than to press the issue.
He’d rented a domestic compact car that got great gas mileage, but came with few extras. Marc drove, because his control issues were in overdrive and he couldn’t take a backseat to Jace.
I didn’t want to drive. My control issues were reserved for people who tried to tell me when and whom to marry.
“Too bad they don’t have phones. I can’t help thinking this would go much more smoothly if we could’ve called ahead to warn them that we’re coming,” Jace said from the backseat.
I twisted in the passenger seat to face him. “And say what? ‘Hey, we’re coming. Please don’t eat us’?”
“Well, that certainly beats, ‘Dinner’s on, come and get it!’”
I smiled, but Jace’s joke had its basis in truth. Thunderbirds were birds of prey, and they preferred raw meat. And when indulging wouldn’t put them in imminent danger of being discovered, they had no qualms about consuming human flesh. In fact, while cannibalism is one of the greatest taboos for werecats, thunderbirds ritualistically consumed the flesh of their enemies and of their own dead.
Also in the con column for dropping in unexpectedly at a thunderbird nest was the fact that they didn’t like visitors. Or surprises. Or werecats. All things considered, we’d been on few riskier missions. And very few that were more important.
After an hour-long drive from the Roswell airport, we pulled off the highway onto a narrow, uneven gravel road, surrounded on both sides by steep hills and rock facings. Nothing made me feel more insignificant than being surrounded by mountains. Except maybe dangling one hundred fifty feet in the air, with nothing between me and death-by-gravity but a pair of sharp, hostile thunderbird talons.
Either way, I was totally out of my element in New Mexico, and more grateful than ever that Marc and Jace had both come, even if riding with the two of them was like riding in a funeral procession. On the way to my own grave.
About four miles down the road, we came to the first obstacle: an old abandoned vehicle positioned sideways in the middle of the road. If we hadn’t been driving a compact, we’d have had to either push the old steel-framed car out of the way on four flat, rotting tires—doable, but unpleasant even for three werecats—or leave the rental car and walk the rest of the way. A mile and a half later, the road was blocked again, this time by two even older stalled cars and a large boulder. The thunderbirds were serious about discouraging salesmen. And trick-or-treaters. And Thin Mint–bearing Girl Scouts.
We had to walk from that point on, armed only with cell phones and protein bars. By the time we came to the pile of huge rocks, likely intentionally tumbled into the middle of the road, the nest was within sight. It sat at the end of the valley, built on an outcropping jutting from the juncture of two hills. The huge lodge-type structure was at least six stories high, by my best guess, and more than two hundred feet in the air. With nary a staircase in sight.
The broad front porch looked out over the sheer drop like a safety-featureless balcony and doubled as a landing pad for the several dozen giant birds housed within.
Marc stopped to stare up at the structure, mouth slack in what could only be awe. “I’ve seen it before, but it’s no less impressive the second time around.”
“Impressive, scary as hell. Opinions vary,” I muttered.
He shook his head. “You can’t argue that that’s not an incredible piece of craftsmanship. I bet they built the whole thing themselves.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and trudged ahead so the guys had no choice but to follow. “I know they did. But you wouldn’t be so impressed by it if you’d ever been flown up there, dangling like a worm to a nest full of giant chicks.”
“I guess.” But he couldn’t tear his gaze from the nest, and I realized this was the first time he’d seen it in daylight. Middle-of-the-day sunlight, in fact.
“So, how are we supposed to get their attention?” Is there a doorbell hidden in tree bark around here somewhere?” Jace glanced at the tree-covered hills encroaching steadily on the narrow road, which was starting to make me feel claustrophobic. “I don’t think I can hit the window with a pebble from here….”
Something squealed faintly overhead, and I glanced up as the front door swung open. “I don’t think getting their attention is gonna be an issue….” But suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted their attention.
I knew exactly what kind of damage an angry cat could inflict—hell, I’d nearly been killed by several of them. I’d even seen a pissed-off bruin throw a full-grown tom into a tree hard enough to break the cat’s spine. But I’d never in my life seen anything scarier than a flight of enraged thunderbirds, and suddenly, coming to demand that they repay their debt seemed like a colossally bad idea. What if they didn’t remember their promise to me, or they’d changed their minds? What if coming unannounced—not that we’d had any choice—was considered bad form, punishable by being ceremonially pecked to death, then eaten?
But we were out of options. If we couldn’t recruit them to unleash that awesome dive-’n’-slash fury against our enemies, we could wave goodbye to the south-central Pride forever. And to our freedom, not long after that, because I had no doubt that once Malone’s grip on his new puppet regime was secure, he’d come after us, and all three of us would rather die fighting than be taken prisoner. Then what would happen to Kaci, Manx, and my mother?
Overhead, two forms appeared at the edge of the front porch, staring down at us. From at least three hundred feet away and two hundred feet up, all I could make out was the typical short, extremely stocky build of two male thunderbirds. I couldn’t even tell for sure whether or not they wore clothes.
They could see us much more clearly—a bird can spot a mouse running through a field from the air, and for the thunderbirds, it didn’t seem to matter whether they were in human or avian form. Not that I’d seen many of them in exclusively one form or another; they tended to prefer endless odd combinations, similar to my own face during a partial Shift. Only their best-of-both-worlds routine was infinitely more useful than mine.
“Do you know them?” Jace squinted into the morning sun, glaring just above the roof of the nest/lodge. “I don’t know any of them. They don’t think like normal…” I whispered, then sputtered to a stop as the two forms suddenly leaped from the porch in sync. And completely wingless.
Marc and Jace both gasped at the abrupt—and apparently suicidal—jump, and it took most of my self-control not to do the same thing.
Upon takeoff, one wingless bird veered left while the other veered right, fully human arms spread wide. Less than a second later, when they’d put enough distance between their artfully falling bodies, both thunderbirds seem to ripple in the air, and suddenly both sets of arms doubled in length and sprouted feathers. Just like that. What had been normal—if heavily muscled—human arms were suddenly six foot long, darkly feathered wings, in the span of less than two seconds.
Their midair Shift was the single most amazing thing I’d ever seen. Bar none. Shifting for the birds didn’t work the same way it worked for us, or presumably for the bruins. Their transformation was neither slow nor awkward, and I could see no sign that it hurt. And—obviously—they could do it in midflight.
That was the equivalent of a werecat Shifting in mid-step. Midleap, even. I couldn’t imagine undergoing such a miracle of transformation, or how different our lives might have been if it were possible, and I spared one moment to be both stunned and impressed. But then common sense took over, and I returned to a healthy state of caution.
The birds swooped toward us in sync, wingtips less than a foot apart. Marc and Jace backpedaled, and after an instant’s hesitation, I decided to stand my ground. Still, my heart beat in terrified syncopation for a moment before the birds dro
pped onto the ground in front of me, even as the avian-scented wind from their last powerful flap blew hair back from my face. Their feathers receded and their limbs shrank to normal size in the time it took for them to fold their huge wings at their sides.
And only once they’d landed did I realize that they were indeed naked, apparently unaffected by the bitter cold. Well, almost unaffected…
I blinked and forced my pulse to slow as Marc and Jace took up protective stances on my left and right, towering over the emissaries. For thunderbirds, these were pretty tall—only an inch or so shorter than my own five-foot-seven frame. But thunderbirds were walking—or flying—proof that size isn’t everything. Inch for inch, they were the single most ruthless predators I’d ever encountered, and they were built for both flight and fight.
Their spindly legs and narrow waists enabled them to build weight, and thus power, where it was really needed for flight—in their thick arms and powerful chests. I’d never seen pecs so well-defined, biceps and triceps so chiseled. They could have been carved from granite. As could their cold, decidedly unwelcoming expressions.
For a moment, we all stared at one another, the cats in wary amazement, the birds in outright suspicion. And when their faces gained human features, I realized I knew them by both face and name.
“Cade and Coyt, right?” I said, hoping my smile looked more confident than it felt.
“Girl-cat,” the one on the left returned in his odd, multitonal voice, nodding in imitation of an actual greeting. And considering that I didn’t know which of them was which, I couldn’t work up any irritation over the fact that they’d obviously forgotten my name. Or saw no reason to use it. “You’ve come to claim what we owe you?”
“Yes. But first I want to speak to Kai. He owes us his life, and I’m calling in his personal debt first.”
Twenty-eight